electro-positive

Definitions

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

adj. Of such a nature relatively to some other associated body or bodies, as to tend to the negative pole of a voltaic battery, in electrolysis, while the associated body tends to the positive pole; -- the converse or correlative of electro-negative.

Etymologies

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Examples

In a somewhat different manner the voltaic current is made use of in ordinary qualitative analysis for the detection of tin, antimony, silver, lead, arsenic, etc., by employing a more electro-positive metal to precipitate a less electro-positive one from its solution.

It was thus that man in this state of consciousness was compelled to picture the foundation of the physical universe as being made up of gravity and electricity, as we meet them in the modern picture of the atom, with its heavy electro-positive nucleus and the virtually weightless electro-negative electrons moving round it.

A conclusion previously arrived at was also confirmed, viz., that the liquids in which the hot metal was thermo-electro-positive in the largest proportion of cases were those containing highly electro-positive bases, such as the alkali metals.

When two metals in good electrical contact are immersed in some liquid that is capable of attacking both, only that metal will be attacked which is the more electro-positive, or which (the same thing in other words) is the more readily attacked by the liquid, evolving the more heat during its dissolution.

The reason for this difference is self-evident; here a foreign metal is brought into electrical contact with the apparatus in order that the latter may be made electro-negative; but when a joint is soldered with lead, the metal of the generator is unintentionally made electro-positive.

All that has to be done, therefore, to protect the walls of an acetylene-holder tank and the sides of its bell is to hang in the seal, supported by a copper wire fastened to the tank walls by a trustworthy electrical joint (soldering or riveting it), a plate or rod of some more electro-positive metal, renewing that plate or rod before it is entirely eaten away.